Beer Growler Tote

[Big Dave]

What I’m thinking is that before I try to sell a single one, I want a system in place that will allow me to batch them out quickly and easily. 

Just_Dave did this with some railroad stools several years ago. He recruited me to help and we made several that were sold in a model railroader's catalog. Nice little venture for a while...
 

You're right to get a plan in place before the orders start coming in. Dave devised several jigs & templates to form just about every piece for cutting and assembly. The first couple times we got together to make some it took us a couple days just cut out 8-10. After Dave got the templates & jigs done, we could cut that many in an afternoon...

Good luck with your plan! And know that I may well be stealing it for my personal use...


Dave

[mr_skittle]

Thanks for the input folks.

I do have intentions of laser engraving logos onto the sides. There is a Makerspace here, right in my neighborhood in fact, that I can get access to a laser machine. Another thing the Makerspace has is a CNC. At some point I'd like to put plans together in Sketckup and get custom, precision jigs made. The deal is, at some point I'll run out of these panels I scored and need to make them for rough lumber. I'm not sure if the methods I come up with now will still be workable or not. One step at a time I guess.

I think I'll only be rounding over the handle at the router table. The rest, I'll just break the edges with sandpaper. 

I'm not sure where the price will end up. I'd like to get $20 wholesale but we'll see how that goes. It remains to be seen what the breweries will be open to. Maybe they'd prefer selling on consignment in which I'd struggle between the $25 and 30 price tag. I'm fully expecting that fudge will be willing to pay $25.

[mr_skittle]

Let's talk a little bit about what I've put together so far for jigs and such.

I started out making the handle out of 3/4 material cause it's what I had lying around. The idea was to knock a 3/4 in. square hole in the side, cut the handle about 1 1/8 inch tall, and put shoulders on the top and bottom of the handle. Not the sides. I figured that, along with pinning the tenons, would be plenty strong and I would only have to cut on two sides to create the shoulders, instead of a 4 shouldered tenon. However, my intention is to use my hollow chisel mortiser to cut the holes. Again, I'm looking towards efficiency and repeatability.  The problem is that the largest bit I could find and afford at the time was 5/8 in. That means that I either make the handles 5/8 thick and stick with my original plan, or I figure out how to put shoulders all the way around. 

   

What you see is simply a 1/4 in. plywood template fastened to a chuck of 3/4 in. material. The ideas is to rough cut on the band saw and use a pattern bit at the router table to clean up the saw marks. Now if I took this piece to the dado blade I could do the side cheeks of tenon before I even cut it with the band saw. You can see where I put the lines to indicate this. But in order to get the handle a comfortable height, about 1 1/4in. or so, I'll still need to cut the other two cheeks/shoulders so that eventually it looks like this. I can picture what a couple different sleds might look like in order to accomplish this on the table saw but is there another way? 

   

[Rob Young]

As long as you are thinking about templates, you can make one (or more) for the bandsaw to facilitate the rough cutting of your parts.

Google will barf up a lot of pages and videos. For example, here's one by Michael Fortune and appeared in Fine Woodworking.
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2008/07/...lex-curves

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&...7t9cQXw7K0

[mr_skittle]

You know, I've never even thought of templates for the band saw. Leave it Michael Fortune. He's the band saw guru. None of the cuts are particularly difficult but making a single template for both band saw and router table operations would be very efficient. Thanks for the idea Rob.

[Bob10]

I made quite a few of these.  I like that it can hold stuff taller than a growler.  I know the owners of the brewery and wanted to show of the name
in my ad

[goaliedad]

Make up one or two- go talk to some breweries. Gauge interest and float your needed price point. That will give you plenty of information. 
Include the idea of customizing them and see what the reaction is

[mr_skittle]

That design is one of the only growler specific one's I found while I was researching design ideas. It seems perfectly functional but I'm looking for something a little more elegant. It does make me consider doing two styles at two different price points. A stick of pine and some nailed butt joints; doesn't get much easier.

Instead of spending my next evening of free time in the shop, I'm going to spend it struggling with SketchUp to get a digital layout put together. I talked with an old colleague from the cabinet shop I worked at. He is doing all the computer designing for a much bigger shop now and offered to produce some drawings for me and maybe even some jigs. Either way, the drawings/files he'll make should plug into most any CNC program so I can take it somewhere to get templates and jigs cut.

My wife was out this evening with some friends at a local Cidery (yes, hard cider is also becoming crazy popular) and checked to see if they offered anything like a tote. Nope. She also notices how dingy their sampler/flight holders were. It's a little board with holes cut to hold small sample glasses so you can try a number of different brews. I'm thinking there might be another opportunity!

[mr_skittle]

I’d like to spend some time now covering how I’m punching the hole for the handle. I was pretty sure that I was going to use my mortiser machine, but I didn’t have the appropriate bit when I was working on the model. I just went with the time-tested method of a forsner bit and a sharp chisel, but I knew this was not a sustainable way to batch them out. After spending what seemed like WAY too long finding the right mortiser bit I started to think about how to make the drill press/chisel method more efficient. 

Quick aside on the search for a bit
I have an older Delta benchtop mortiser that only accepts 5/8in shaft bit. Turns out that most bits are not 5/8. In addition, I also wanted to get a more middle of the road bit when it comes to quality. Amazon has sooo many different choices but when you are looking for anything over ½ in the pickings get slim. Either they were of extremely questionable quality or didn’t have the right size shaft. I was originally looking for 3/4 in but when the search wasn’t going my way so I started looking at 5/8in. I finally found one from Woodline, with the right size shaft, for about $25. I can’t say I’m impressed with the quality but after lots of sharpening, it's serviceable. Sharpening the inside of a bit over ½ is really a pain. The little diamond cones don’t fit! This whole story explains why I need to figure out if and how to get a 4 shouldered tenon on the handle. 

To get back on track, let's talk about my failed attempt at a jig for finished the mortise. The ideas is to come up with a way to punch the hole without having to lay it out. For my first attempt, I tacked a few cleats onto a piece of plywood to hold the side in place while I squared up the hole from the forsner bit. Then I fastened a piece of oak over the cleats and with a nice square guide hole directly above the hole in the handle. My thinking was that I could use the oak board to help guide my chisel and shave some time off the process. It didn’t work out well enough. I’d likely be easier just to do it without the guide. I had already taken the guide apart so the picture is just a mock-up to give the idea. 

   

I think I will at least be able to salvage the plywood and cleats setup to use on the mortiser. I’ll just fasten it down to the table of the machine and center it under the bit. This is what I envisioned from the start but it took longer than I'd have liked to finally get here. And let me say this, Using this mortiser for 5/8in holes is no treat. Even after tuning up the chisel and bit, you really have to pull on that handle. 

   


Next up I'll cover what I came up with for the notches on the sides and the carrier for the router table.